I've been working as the Social Media Editor and a staff writer at Forbes since October 2011. Prior to that, I worked as a freelance writer and contributor here. On this blog, I focus on futurism, cutting edge technology, and breaking research. Follow me on Twitter - @thealexknapp. You can email me at aknapp@forbes.com

ResearchGate Wants To Be Facebook For Scientists

Social media seems like a natural fit for the scientific community. Science is, after all, about the sharing of information, and scientists often collaborate with each other in their work. Nevertheless, despite several different efforts, no platform yet has become the social media platform for the scientific community.

Dr. Ijad Madisch intends to be the man who puts that platform into place. He’s the CEO and co-founder of ResearchGate, a social network intended to be a way for scientists to come together and collaborate so that they can save time and effort by sharing their experiences and techniques to solve problems.

Even more importantly, says Madisch, they can find out what doesn’t work so they can look for alternative solutions or techniques. “The problem is that in journals, scientists only publish positive results – not negative ones.”

The site was founded in 2008, but really began to take off with its first series of funding in the Fall of 2010. At that time, the site had about 500,000 users. In February, the company completed their second series of funding, which was led by support from the Founders Fund. As of this writing, the site has grown to include over 1.4 million more members, making it one of the biggest social media networks catering specifically to scientists.

But why do scientists need to use social media in the first place? Madisch cites three reasons they should, and in particular, three reasons he think scientists should use ResearchGate. First, he says, it lets you build your own profile within your field by posting your publications and research. If you publish, it gives you the opportunity to share datasets that weren’t in the final journal version. Second, it allows you to engage in discussion with other scientists if you’re looking for advice or suggestions on a particular topic. Finally, it allows you to keep up with the work in your field by following current publications in a more focused way.

“Ultimately,” he says. “I want to make science more open.”

The site has made some impressive strides since it began, and visiting it does show some very active discussions. Still, for a site with as many users as it has, it didn’t seem like a lot of them were active. So I asked a few users of the site what their general impressions were.

“ResearchGate suffers from similar ailments as most of the many ‘Facebook for scientists’,” says Dr. Björn Brembs. “In that there is little incentive for researchers to visit it, as the ratio of input (time) to output (information) is just not very favorable.”

Christie Wilcox, a PhD student and blogger for Scientific American, had a similar opinion. “Honestly, I think ResearchGate is a good idea, but I have yet to see it reach its potential and thus I don’t find it all that useful.”

Neuroscientist Bradley Voytek was more enthusiastic, though he was still cautious. “ResearchGate has not yet become a ‘checked daily’ site for me, but it does have many useful tools. It’s nice to see updates from colleagues about new papers published, for example.”

“ResearchGate has its work cut out for them,” Voytek added. That’s because, in his opinion, “researchers are quite conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies because time and attention are scarce commodities”. Additionally, he says that, “They need to figure out how to get older, more experienced scientists to use their service. That’s a difficult task.”

Dr. Ijad Madisch. (Credit: Timothy Fadek)

For his part, Madisch isn’t afraid of the work, or the feedback. “Feedback from the community is what’s shaping this project. We’re always trying to get feedback and it’s always a huge influence on what we’re doing.”

As for gaining traction in the community, Madisch is optimistic. “Our focus now is actually on attracting younger members, who seem to be more apt to use the network. That said, we’re finding that older generations of researchers are increasingly starting to sign up. In a related story, when I first started working on the launch of ResearchGate, my German professor at the time – a 62-year-old distinguished academic who has published more than a thousand papers – did not endorse my working on ResearchGate while I was doing research. (I went to Harvard to continue my work and launching ResearchGate where my professor there was fully okay with my doing both.) I found out a couple of months ago that my German professor has signed up to become a ResearchGate user.”

In addition to building a larger user base, Madisch has another big plan for ResearchGate that the company intends to work on after obtaining its latest round of funding. That’s building ResearchGate into a way to build a scientist’s reputation outside of the traditional world of journal publication.

“I think that if you haven’t published, you can still have lots of knowledge in your field, and institutions should honor that, but they need a way to prove it,” explains Madisch. “Scientists are publishing stuff on their ResearchGate profiles, helping other scientists, and earning a reputation. That reputation will be reflected within the system.”

ResearchGate will also be looking into ways to monetize its platform. The “no-brainer” way to do that, in Madisch’s words, is to provide job boards for scientists looking for jobs. Universities and companies would pay the site to place listings. The company is also looking for ways to partner with other companies that manufacture and sell biotech lab equipment, as well as several other different programs.

Gaining traction among scientists to be the social media platform will still take a lot of time and effort from ResearchGate. But Madisch is confident that the company will succeed.

“In the beginning, everyone told me that I was crazy. This changed as more people started using it and the media started talking about it. Several scientific breakthroughs have been achieved because of work at ResearchGate. We can continue to achieve breakthroughs in science if people are talking to each other.”

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I can’t help wondering if the “Facebook” model is less useful for this service than a “Quora” model of sorts. The Facebook model suggests it will be driven by personal profiles and uses “building blocks” of individual user pages, from which all other interactions have to grow and develop, instead of putting the focus on topic pages for fields of research and being driven by questions and discussions on those topic pages.

The difference is that, for a Facebook model, your experience begins as a personal profile interaction, which is you-centric and up front requires a lot of building of your profile page etc, instead of jumping in to the content first and developing your personal profile and uploads etc as just a part of your interaction on the site. If they weighted it more toward topic-centered pages for input and discussion, I suspect there would be more opportunity and interest. And of course, the more it recruits students in scientific fields (limited to graduate+ level, I assume), the more it might also benefit from people coming to discuss new theories and ongoing clinical trials, new research, etc.

“By submitting the contribution, the User grants to ResearchGate an irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive license, free of royalty or any other payment, without limit of time and for all purposes, including, without limitation, online publishing and the power to grant sub-licenses.”

I’m curious if other researchers are as suspicious of these systems as I am, both in terms of them taking over copyright, and/or the flip side of them limiting distribution of such knowledge, which is the problem with most academic publishers.

IS RESEARCH GATE A SCAM. I am an NIH funded professor at USC (www.linkedin.com/pub/fatih-uckun/12/997/844) and serve as Head of Translational Research in Leukemia and Lymphoma at the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases/Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and recently joined Research Gate.

Unfortunately, Research Gates employs a nontransparent scoring system and arbitrarily assigns so called RGS scores to researchers. Their founder does not have a PhD and he is not a virologist as claimed. Many persons who are listed as researchers do not have the educational background or qualifications to participate in high level scientific discussions.

I tried to ask some questions about the qualifications of their staff members and my comments were quickly deleted within 8 hours in violation of my first amendment rights. Then they sent me an e-mail: “We would gladly discuss your concerns directly, please just send us an email or give us a call. Our CEO Ijad Madisch would be happy to talk to you as well”.

As a research scientist, I find ResearchGate’s behavior to be extremely off-putting.

Last week they sent me an email to my professional address asking me to confirm or deny that I am a co-author on a published paper. I was NOT a co-author, but to tell them so they REQUIRE that I open a ResearchGate account to respond.

I DO NOT want to submit to their strong-arm tactics and sign up for an account with my professional email address, nor do I want it thought that I was the co-author of someone else’s paper. (That someone else also has my same last name and first initial.)

This bad behavior me not want to deal with this obnoxious website in the future. I can’t trust that they’ll keep my address private from other spammers besides themselves.

Here is a piece that should go down in history with RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET, about one of its web-accounters Gabriele Scheler, fascism crimes, miscarriage of justice, etc.

===============================================

Dear General Counsel Dennis and Ms Natalie Kent of RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET, along with and all others whom Gabriele Scheler had interacted with on RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET,

— Would RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET like to keep advocating a personnel associated with fascism crimes? —

Over 10 days had past since my challenge against this criminal suspect Gabriele Scheler’s appearance on RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET, I just find Gabriele Scheler regain her activity on RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET while my account ‘Ming Cao’ still remain locked;— Is that a fair thing to do, dear people from RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET? — Can RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET urge those in my public challenge publicldeny anything I said? Didn’t my statements stand still? _______________________________________________

— http://t.cn/R7F1yQ0 attention to the 7 photo evidence; In addition to a series of retaliatory fascism crimes from Gabriele Scheler’s side, would anyone whose spirit has at least a bit sense of mercy on another human being and with at least a fair education in terms of humanity, go to the extreme of cruelness to injure the body of another human being to that extent? — How could such criminal behaviors from a criminal suspect as Gabriele Scheler is be tolerated by judicial authorities?

— Here is the link to this criminal suspect Gabriele Scheler’s page on RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET — http://t.cn/RPLEG7D —— How could such inhuman and criminal behaviors from Gabriele Scheler be tolerated in science and technology societies, according RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET standard? _______________________________________________

Fairness and justice are being challenged, fascism prevails and miscarriage of justice is going on; if this case remain unclarified, more and more innocent people would become victims later on, and that’s why we have to keep challenging; I believe people of RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NETwould have the social rectitude to respect wishes from the victims and help us push forward and clarify this decade long criminal case and find justice to such fascism crimes coming along with such fascists as Gabriele Scheler and Sebastian Thrun are;

— Would anyone or any organization, e.g. RESEARCH-DOT-NET, like to associate himself/herslef/itself with fascism crimes?

Would anyone like to advocate someone who’s criminal behaviors have brought into our lives anti-humanity crimes which are fascism by nature and which had endangered human lives? Would anyone like to be living in a society under the jurisdiction of some malicious and cowardice officers (namely ZZZ/YYY/VVV, they must have power of jurisdiction over civilians of Santa Clara county, DA? or FBI?) who hided their identities from us while colluding with those fascists to cover up their fascism crimes and at the same time retaliate on victims? ……………………………………………………………………

But how could such a simple campus atrocity case turned into a series of fascism crimes for over a decade long which got more and more innocent people involved? — Fascism prevails and miscarriage of justice is going on; — not all by my capability could handle; __________________________________

— Such fascism crimes have to be disciplined by laws and such fascists like Gabriele Scheler and Sebastian Thrun and the likes have to be brought to justice; they can’t escape from it;

Here is the statement of how miscarriage of justice is carrying on in Sebastian Thrun and Gabriele Scheler’s case, written in Chinese characters; save them for later use, please; _______________________

— 有人能让大家知道那些后来处理本案司法官员（namely ZZZ/YYY/VVV, they must have power of jurisdiction over civilians of Santa Clara County) 的真实身份么？我有严肃的问题要问他们；

— Again, ZZZ/YYY/VVV are judicial officers (from Santa Clara DA? or from FBI?), but not mafia, or are they? their practices as judicial officers have to withstand the scrutiny from the public; By law, they have to show us their real identities; they can’t hide their real identities from us for ever;

Again, — Would RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET like to keep advocating a personnel associated with fascism crimes? —

_______________________________________________

Again and again, at this stage, the most confusing part of this case is: — What are the real identities of judicial officers (namely ZZZ/YYY/VVV, who must have power of jurisdiction over civilians of Santa Clara County) handling Sebastian Thrun’s case and this criminal suspect Gabriele Scheler’s recanted testimony? How can I see their materials to accuse/curse me and to mess up this case?

Can anyone here, e.g. General Counsel Dennis of RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET, help us know? I have serious questions to ask them;

………………… P.S. …………………

— ZZZ/YYY/VVV are judicial officers (from Santa Clara DA? or FBI? etc.), but not mafia, or are they? their practices as judicial officers have to withstand the scrutiny from the public; By law, they have to show us their real identities; they can’t hide their real identities from us for ever; _______________________________________________ Wouldn’t all citizens of RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET deserve to know the truth of this decade long criminal case which is fascism by nature? What’s going on here?

_______________________________________________

Isn’t it a basic instinct that embedded into the spirits of us all to spontaneously fight against such anti-humanity crimes?

It is a tough task to challenge such fascism crimes; As a victim of a series of fascism crimes associated with Sebastian Thrun (who’s been advocated here) along with this suspect Gabriele Scheler, and the likes, what I posted on the web are no more than facts, facts those fascists I challenged dare never publicly deny; I bet such of their fascism crimes would not be tolerated anywhere in human society; If anyone disagree, especially those in my public challenge, please give us a candid answer right here on this board, which part in my statements is not base upon facts? What’s going on here?

Equal opportunity and freedom of speech, please:)

…………………………………..

I believe the majority of the population would not take side with those who had committed such fascism crimes, as nobody would like to lend hands to personnel associated with fascism crimes, nor would anybody like to cover up their fascism crimes; — Though there could be aberrations, such aberrations definitely can not become the mainstream;

I also believe that we people from RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET would have the social rectitude to respect wishes from the victims and help us push forward and clarify this decade long criminal case and find justice to such fascism crimes coming along with such fasicts as Sebastian Thrun and this criminal suspect Gabriele Scheler (who happened to be an active member of RESEARCHGATE-DOT-NET society) are;

Again, if there are any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask via this email: caomingpeter126@126.com